Eric Frank, Neeru Paharia & more

The Creative Commons Salon NYC is back in action on March 3rd at the Open Planning Project’s uber cool penthouse space from October. The theme for this salon is “Opening Education”, and if you don’t really know what that means, think CC licenses as applied to various learning contexts and you’re off to a good start. To learn more, come by for a good time and free (as in beer) beer.

Michael Mandiberg & Mushon Zer-Aviv

Upgrade! NY presents:
Collaborative Futures Book Launch & Talk
a book about free collaboration written collaboratively in 5 days

Watch the live video stream on March 4 at 7:30PM (EST) and participate in the discussion!

Over 5 days in mid January 2010 the Transmediale festival locked 6 writers and 1 programmer in a Berlin hotel room to collaboratively write a book about the future of free collaboration; the authors started with only the title, and ended the week with a book.

Transmediale Artistic Director Stephen Kovats will be on hand to join Eyebeam Senior Fellow Michael Mandiberg and Eyebeam Honorary Resident Mushon Zer-Aviv, to talk about the process of writing the book, and some of their discoveries in the collaborative process. Stephen Kovatz will also talk about the ‘Futurity Now’ concept of TM10 in general and particularly in the context of the Collaborative Futures book sprint.

Gabriella Coleman

ITP
721 Broadway, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10003

Why have geeks been compelled to protest the Church of
Scientology vehemently for nearly two decades? This talk starts with
this question to present a cultural history and political analysis of
one of the oldest Internet wars, often referred to as “Internet vs
Scientology.” During the 1990s, this war was waged largely on USENET (a
large scale messaging board system), while in recent times it has taken
the form of “Project Chanology.” This project is orchestrated by a
loosely defined group called “Anonymous” who has led a series of online
attacks and real world protests, often using a variety of media, against
Scientology. I argue that to understand the significance of these
battles and protests, we must examine how the two groups stand in a
culturally antipodal relation to each other. Through this analysis of
cultural inversion, I will consider how long-standing liberal ideals
take cultural root in the context of these battles, use these two cases
to reveal important political transformations in Internet/hacker culture
between the mid 1990s and today and finally will map the tension between
pleasure/freedom (the “lulz”) and moral good (”free speech”) found among
Anonymous in terms of the tension between liberal freedom and trollish trickery.